Renegotiating the “Asian woman” in education: Three lives

The experience of being an Asian woman in education, particularly in an Anglophone Western context, is made doubly complex through our experiences of what we call the racialisation of our gender, and the genderedness of our race. In the following three narratives, we have drawn on Clandinin’s narrative inquiry approach to repudiate the homogenising narratives that race and gender play in our lives, and to provide models of critical engagement and resistance for those who seek to be less imperiled by such narratives.

We also draw from Sara Ahmed’s notion of affective economies to complement our narratives, particularly in her interrogation of the ways in which certain affects stick more stubbornly to certain identities. In exploring the specific affective resonances of the “Asian woman”, we seek to unbind them from the very social edifices (of whiteness, masculinity, or cultural hegemony) that would otherwise fetter us within educational spaces. In doing so, we occupy but also defy the very moniker of “Asian woman” – a moniker overdetermined by the gendered and racialised structures of educational history.